


Plum Velvet

by Aphoride



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Boys In Love, Community: HPFT, M/M, Obsessive Love, Vampires, little bit of violence, lots of mythological references, not much though
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-06
Updated: 2014-10-06
Packaged: 2018-02-20 03:18:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,931
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2412995
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aphoride/pseuds/Aphoride
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Adoration only grows, fast and strong, until I cannot live without him. In my world, he replaced the sun, and I breathed only at his command. </p>
<p>Lovers alone wear sunlight - e. e. cummings</p>
            </blockquote>





	Plum Velvet

Plum Velvet 

When I see him, I am lost. Lost for words, for sense, for feeling – for everything. In one single moment, in a single glance, he has stolen all of me and made it his own. All thoughts of work, of family and friends, vanish from my mind and my attention, so often scattered and divided, focuses solely on him. It takes no effort; it seems natural, only right.

If he notices me, he doesn’t say, doesn’t turn to look. He simply stands there, hands in his pockets, a living Renaissance painting in a velvet coat and white gloves. Even from here, I can see how his hair curls under his ears, mussed and slick with damp, the sharp cut of his jaw.

It is a grey, chilly, rainy day – British to a tee – and yet, somehow he almost glows. Light shimmers out of his skin, gold and silver in tandem, the heavens themselves focusing on him, clouds parting over his head to reveal sky, pale blue and clear. He is crowned in a beam of sunlight, untouched by the breeze and the faint shower. There is something faint and ethereal about him, as though if I squinted hard I might be able to see through him; he is waifish and beautiful, and I find myself thinking about elves and princes and dragons.

For the first time in months, as I watch him, I feel the Muses return to me, I feel my heart and hand stir and words, unbidden, leap to my tongue, balancing on the tip of my quill. Even as I scrabble for a fresh page, I steal another glance at him, sly and quick.

Apollo reborn, I think, and resolutely do not wonder what (or whom) that would make me.

* * *

It is night, and I am there, again, at the park, notebook on my lap and quill in hand. The stranger – beautiful, nameless – stands away from me, hair falling onto his shoulders and his hands in his pockets. No one else is around, even the birds and animals have fled, deep into the undergrowth. Without them around to sing or scamper, there is only the harsh heaves of my own breath, the faint rustle of the leaves on the trees.

Even in the dark, he shines. The moon tangles in his hair, stars clinging to his coat and trousers. I study him absently, admiring the way his coat curves against his skin, nipping in at his waist, the way everything he wears hugs him, a second skin of leather and velvet. It seems to me that light, whether of day or night, whether artificial or not, can’t help but be drawn to him, bathing him in it with all the tenderness of a lover.

The wind whips up, biting at my neck and face; there will be marks tomorrow, I’m sure. Waiting, poised, it catches my sigh, soft and almost melancholy and floats away with it to that boy both so close and so far.

For a moment, breathless, staring, I wait for him to turn, to see me and smile – oh, just to see him smile – but he doesn’t. Instead, before my eyes, he seems to fade and vanish into the dark, returning the light to the moon, stars bursting out of the sky in an effort to outshine him, jealous fiends that they are.

Alone, with no reason to be here now, I sit there and scuff my shoes against the floor and frown. I had hoped… had wanted… but it doesn’t matter now. Standing up, I take a breath, gathering my things, and feel determination, hot and hard, swirling in my stomach and up my spine.

Twice he has disappointed me, I think. There will be no third disappointment.

* * *

All I can see is white, white everywhere: wisps of fog, whispering and shuddering, curl up my arms, melt away before my touch and my eyes and my feet. They seem to tug and pull at my clothes, wind their willing accomplice, guiding me through, though I don’t know to where. It is harsh, cruel in its insistence, and there are tears, small but real, lingering in the corners of my eyes, the wind leaning in to lick them out and then off my skin. I shiver, though not from the cold: from anticipation, the thrill of the possibilities, of facing the unknown and uncertain.

I can see him easily through the mist: bright blue trousers and a halo around his head turn him into a beacon, beckoning me, luring me in. Like a fly drawn to a light, I cannot retreat or leave, my course is set in stone.

Slowly, I stop beside him. This close, he is even more beautiful, golden curls set against fair, fair skin, and once again, I am lost, witless and breathless. Should I speak; if I do, what should I say? Should I move; if I do, what should I do? I am there, next to him, frozen and staring – obvious, glaring, and he can’t help but to notice, this close.

In my mind, before this moment, I ran over hundreds of different scenarios, where I was suave and seductive, he was shy and blushing and sweet; I was adoring and begging and he a god showing me his grace and favour. Never, in any one of them, had I simply stood there, struck dumb with fear, as though waiting for a sign from the heavens as to how to proceed.

Coward, I hear my brother’s voice sneer in my head. Always such a cowardly little lion.

He glances at me, fleeting, and then away. Carnations, pale pink and delicate, bloom on his cheeks, and I bite my lip. There is something so utterly human about that, so instinctive and natural, that I half want to grab him and kiss him then and there. I don’t, though, and so, as neither of us knows what to do or to say (in truth, I’m only grateful he didn’t run away – having a stranger come and stand next to you and stare must be uncomfortable, unusual), and we stand there, a strange sort of picture in the park.

Then, hesitantly, I reach for his hand, feeling my fingers brush and slide against his skin. There, I wait a moment, and, when he doesn’t pull away, I slip my hand into his, hoping beyond everything that he won’t shake me off and run away, crying out in shock and horror and disgust.

His hand is cold and slender and, as he laces our fingers together, I think that he might be smiling.

* * *

Sitting on my bed, the sheets crumpled beneath me, my gaze ghosts across the spines of the books on my shelves. The walls of my room are covered with them – they feed out into the rest of my flat, swallowing up space and replacing it with varnished wood. I don’t mind, books are my constant companions, my demanding and tenacious muses. They are the solution to everything for me: if I need to cry, to laugh, to sleep, to simply lose myself in another world and a myriad of problems other than my own, I wander up and down the hallways until something catches my eye and I read and read and read till the last page is finished and the covers closed over it once again.

Tonight, I should be sleeping, I should be dreaming – perhaps of him, my stranger, but perhaps not – but I find I can’t sleep. The air outside is still and silent; something, unseen, unheard, keeps me awake.

Nothing captures my imagination; I can’t force myself to read, nor do I want to. Instead, sighing and flopping down onto the sheets, feeling the threads of the blanket, thick and woollen, scratch at my skin, I find myself thinking of him.

He had left me, that wonderful winter afternoon, standing there, with a cheek warm from a kiss and a scrap of parchment in my hand. His address, in green ink, was there; I had given him my own before he left, folding it neatly into his palm. We hadn’t spoken, had only communicated by expressions and gestures, but the slow, coy smile he had given me had been worth the uncertainty silence had wrought.

Now, in my room, tucked away from the world, away from the park and the rain and the light, I wait, impatient and nervous, for him to contact me.

Please, please, I think, hoping somehow my plea will reach him, please don’t have been teasing me.

* * *

The letter, when it comes, is short. Turning it over in my hands, I am torn between disappointment that it is not any longer, nothing extra added onto it, and the pure happiness from the fact that he remembered me, he remembered to owl me. With this proof in my hands, incontrovertible and real, I can believe that maybe it meant something, that short grasp of hands and the sweet blush.

There is my name, the letters rounded and elaborate, a time and a date – an evening, in three days’ time. He didn’t sign his name at the bottom, though, only blank space beyond it.

I am curious; I am utterly, utterly impatient: I cannot wait to see him again.

* * *

His front door is black, painted wood with a gold knocker; the house itself is terraced and white, with iron railings around a balcony on the top. It is old, that much I can tell – Victorian, perhaps – and it has a presence all of its own: a sort of looming, haughty air, as though it is looking down on me, in my dark green suit and shirt. I am intimidated, anxious, excited; adrenalin sets me to drumming my fingers on my thigh, hand clutching a bottle of red wine.

Soon, too soon and yet far, far too late, he opens the door.

He is Dorian Gray in the flesh: the high-collared white shirt covering the base of his neck, sealed with a cravat tie and pin. Perhaps on others it would have looked old-fashioned, out of place, but on him it looks right, strangely fitting, as though he had been created out of wind and light, just as he is, with those clothes on his back.

Then he smiles at me, stepping aside to let me in, and any greeting I had intended to say sticks in my throat, because he is smiling and it is all for me, it is because of me.

In that moment, I want nothing more than to make him smile like that again and again and again.

He takes the bottle from my hands, nails scratching on the glass and fingers gliding over mine, and shuts the door, blocking out the light, the reality of the world outside and submerging us both in the dark. His hand doesn’t leave mine, his eyes don’t look away and he doesn’t stop smiling.

* * *

Away from him, my fingers trail over a row of raw half-moons, embedded in my neck, pink and tender. They don’t hurt, don’t ache dully, instead the signals they send shooting up my spine are faint, reminiscent of the sharp, icy passion he loves me with. He doesn’t say it – hasn’t said it yet – but I feel it in the way he kisses me, pressing my head into the wall, and the way he watches me when we’re together, his eyes hooded and darkly wanting. Now, he has written it into my skin, in marks on my hips, on my neck, so that I can’t forget him.

There was no danger of that, anyway, but he didn’t seem to believe me when I told him. Instead, he had looked strangely, fleetingly nervous and so very, very young, no longer the timeless seducer, and asked if he could sign me as his own, just to be sure.

I said yes, but I don’t think I could ever deny him anything. He is beautiful, and I am lucky beyond life.

The marks on my body are fading, turning translucent and disappearing. It is three days until I will see him next – his father wants him home, wants to talk to him about something – and then he will remark me. This time, though, I’ll ask him; he’ll like that, I think. He’ll smile and sigh when he kisses me, and that will make the time apart worth it on its own.

I’m a lovesick fool, I tell myself sternly, but it doesn’t do anything other than make my heart twang piteously in my chest. I may be a lovesick fool, and happy to be so, but he isn’t and something about that sets my stomach to twisting and my throat to tightening. He’s young, I remind myself whenever these thoughts come up, we’re young, we have time, we can learn to love. It’s not impossible – it happens all the time that couples don’t fall in love at the same time; fairytale romances are for fairytales.

Oh, but I want that: the romance with the candles and flowers, the sighs and swoons and knights in armour on pure white stallions, who have determination for shields and love for lances. I want for nothing more than to be the Hephaestion to his Alexander, Patroclus to his Achilles, Hyacinthus to his Apollo. My parents had that kind of love, that once-in-a-lifetime passion – is it so wrong that I want it too?

In the middle of the night, my eyes fly open to stare at the ceiling, a smile forming on my face. Perhaps, just perhaps, I have been going about this wrongly. Perhaps, rather than be romanced, I should romance him.

* * *

Moonlight spills into the room through the gauze covering the windows. Softly winding into the room, it settles over the bed, covering white satin and skin alike in a fine, shimmering dust. The breeze slips in through the thin curtains, sending them fluttering and twisting as it reaches out to the two of us; it is moonlight’s own arm, caressing and sighing with a peaceful, indulgent smile.

My fingers run over familiar lines and curves, retracing the steps which were learned so long ago. Up the length of his neck, along his jaw and just underneath a full bottom lip, enticing them to part with a gentle exhale, and then past his ear, by his temple, and round to cup the back of his head. In the moonlight, the transition from skin to hair is almost invisible, gold bleached into spun silver, spread out across his arm and the pillow.

Night paints him beautiful and ethereal, and I can only worship him.

This close, I am not merely studying him as a whole, as a visitor might admire a particularly fine painting, but studying him in minute detail, from the fading flush on his cheeks, to the flecks of grey and deep brown in his eyes.

Here, now, I am Eros incarnate, having conjured up a soft, sweet devotion in his eyes, roses on his dressing table and a single lit candle on the bedside table. Shadows dance across the room, snaking across our bodies, entwined still, and from the look he wears I can’t help but wonder if maybe, for the first time, I gleam in the light as he does.

He tells me that night, then and there, that he loves me, and I am utterly, deliriously happy for the first time I can remember.

* * *

Hyperion.

His name lingers; I hear it everywhere. In my mind, it echoes off the empty walls of my flat, slinking from room to room even as I go, following it and abandoning it. Somehow, it always finds me, wherever I go.

Hyperion: the titan of sun and light, in the old religions, for the old peoples and the old gods. It is deliciously ironic, in that it is both so true and so false – for in the dark he shines almost more than he sparkles in the day, though in both it is light which crowns him and loves him.

I chant his name in my head, a silent litany, when I’m not with him, when his father’s called him back home again for something or another. Hyperion, Hyperion, Hyperion. He really is a god, my god, and I would build him any altar he wanted, offer him any sacrifice he demanded, simply to have him forever.

My Hyperion. I love him, and it scares me.

* * *

We sit in the park, no one around to watch us but the stars; the moon has hidden herself, sister to my lover, for some things are not for siblings to know about each other. It is a harsh night, cold and damp, and he freezes in my arms, enveloped in leather and fur, his head pillowed on my lap.

I’m not cold; he is here with me, and I bask in his glow, warm and slyly silky.

As he presses kisses to each of my fingertips, each one lazy but his grip is tight, so tight I wonder if there will be bruises blossoming tomorrow, I find my voice and talk. I tell him everything: how much I love him, how much the depth of it scares me, terrifies me, how I don’t think I would survive losing him, whether to illness or another man or old age. My voice grows thick and taut, and I can feel my face burn; I haven’t been this open with anyone in years, not since I used to talk with dad on the steps of our house at sunrise.

“Albus,” he says my name, his tone sharp and almost desperate. When I look at him, he is blazing, the sun on my lap, and I see something fierce, something lethal in his eyes. “You won’t lose me. I promise.”

* * *

The stories run through my head at night as I lay awake: my namesakes, an unhappy pair, a lonely pair. Loveless, both of them, for so very long. One had abandoned his love before she could even refuse him, casting her out and then forever running after, with no way to make it up; the rest of his life was nothing more than a shadow, a half-life, fuelled by spite and jealousy and hatred. The other loved and lost, loneliness and bitterness colouring separation, marring what could have been a beautiful, glorious future, and ended up with both of them chained to the past and each other and hopeless, crippling guilt.

I won’t end up like either of them; I can’t end up like either of them.

Losing him, well, it’s something I refuse to contemplate, I won’t imagine it because it leaves me pained and gasping on the floor, fear and self-loathing making me scream until I cry, and cry until I can’t do anything other than pant, breathless and shaking, the portraits in the flat all long gone to other paintings, other photographs.

I remember the white tomb, how it shone incandescent in the sunlight and moonlight same, and how it had always comforted me to sit there and relay my life, good and bad, to the man I was named for, the man I had always admired, even loved, for putting my future before his own; I think of the small, arched tombstone in a graveyard with the other war heroes, under the branches of a yew tree, and how there had been something solemn about laying a lily there every year eight days after New Year’s.

Really, I tell myself, I owe it to both of them to get my happy ending, to have my fairytale romance. It is the next best thing, to show that their legacy doesn’t live on.

They’d like that, I think, and I smile; cat-like and contented.

* * *

I am cold, so very cold, with red indents on my neck and shoulders, running down my spine to circle round my hips, lovingly obscene. The fire, chest-high and a dusty, midnight purple, doesn’t warm me, seemingly fleeing from my hands and face even as I crouch down in front of it. A shiver runs through my body, leaving my mouth in a rattle of empty air, and behind me I hear him laugh softly.

For a moment, just a moment, I’m annoyed and I feel anger, hot and quick and violent, flare up inside me. Something dark jerks in my mind, predatory and ancient, and then his arms creep around me, one hand curling on my waist, and it retreats back again, purring, subdued for now.

The box inside my pocket feels heavy and bulky, and I can’t help but imagine that he knows what it is, knows what I want, that he’s only teasing me by distracting me constantly by chattering about the weather and feeding me chocolate-and-firewhisky apricot drops. In fact, I’m certain he’s teasing me – there’s been something light and amused, impish almost, in his eyes all evening.

If I didn’t love him so much, I’d hate him right now. Slowly, I rise and turn around to face him, drinking in the sight of him there, wearing only one of my shirts, stopping at mid-thigh, and rumpled, tossed curls. He is beautiful, sleepily gorgeous, and I intend to make him mine.

The words don’t stick in my throat as I’d thought they would; they seem to flow out of me, low and fervent:

“I want you to be mine forever,” I tell him, watching as his face lights up, as his eyes fix on me, unmoving, the truth of the moment sinking into him. “Will you?”

He nods, speechless, reaching for me, to hold me, to kiss me, to tell me he loves me, but I’m quicker and I get to him first, want and need flooding my veins.

A soft sound as sharp ivory pierces through skin, then sinks down, down through muscle, past tendon and into an artery, sending warm blood gushing down my throat, metallic and thick and rich. His hands on my shoulders grasp, his body shaking and a moan wresting itself out of his mouth; he sounds pained and suddenly scared, trying to struggle, but I don’t let him. I won’t let him. It will all be over soon.

After a minute or two, I think – I have never been good with times in situations like these – the breath slips from him in a silent, voiceless gasp, and he stills, head falling back to bare his throat to me, hands limp on my shoulders. In death, he is as beautiful as in life, a waxwork version of himself, light entrapped within his skin, in his very flesh, uncorrupted and all the sweeter for it. On his throat, the marks I have made, two identical punctures, are already starting to heal; I make sure to clean them thoroughly, reluctant to let him be when the taste of him still lingers in my mouth.

He weighs nothing in my arms, featherlike and seemingly so small now, and I hold him even as I slide drop after crimson drop past his lips, giving him half of what life I have left, tying him to me forever. It’s more permanent this way, less fragile than any ceremony could ever be, and I brush the curls from his brow and kiss him as I take him through to my room, prepared for this very moment with the blinds drawn shut and the cloyingly sweet scent of flowers to smother Death’s presence.

I lay him in the bed, crowned with roses and wrapped in lilies, and wait, patiently, for him to wake.

**Author's Note:**

> *Cross-posted from HPFF* 
> 
> Any characters/names/etc. do not belong to me - Dorian Gray and all references belongs to Oscar Wilde, Alexander and Hephaestion belong to themselves as real people, and Achilles, Patroclus, the Muses, Apollo, Hyacinthus, Eros, references to the titan Hyperion, etc. belong variously to Homer and to Greek mythology in general and so to no one.


End file.
